Professional Staff Biographies

Karen ComstockAssistant Dean for Public Service
Room 145
(607) 255-3597

Assistant Dean Comstock provides career counseling to students and alumni on all aspects of the public sector job search, organizes programs to educate students about legal career opportunities, manages the Cyrus Mehri Public Interest speaker series, and develops employer contacts and job search resources. She also organizes pro bono projects, and oversees fundraising efforts for Law School public interest programs, including the Public Interest Low Income Protection Plan.
Assistant Dean Comstock serves as an adjunct professor of law for the law school's summer externship program.

Prior to April 2004 she was the Assistant Dean for Career Services. From 1989-1994 Assistant Dean Comstock held the position as Brooklyn Law School's first Public Interest Coordinator. Previous experience includes work with the New York Public Interest Research Group, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the Office of the U.S. Senate Legal Counsel, and a 1984 Ralph Nader voter education project.
In 2008-2009 she chaired the Public Service Section of the National Association of Law Placement.
She is a long-standing member of the NALP GLBT Committee and the Association of American Law School's sections on Student Services and Public Interest and Pro Bono Opportunities.

Assistant Dean Comstock is a certified mediator with the NYS Unified Court System and a certified administrator of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. She received her B.S. in 1984 and J.D. in 1989 from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Elizabeth K. PeckAssistant Dean for Professional Development and Clerkships Room 142
(607) 255-9057

Assistant Dean Peck leads the law school in establishing stand-alone professional development programming and in integrating professional-development training into the curriculum. She also supervises the clerkship-application process for student and alumni candidates applying to federal and state courts.

Prior to May 2015, she was the Director of Public Service and from July 2004 to June 2009, Assistant Dean Peck was the Director of Career Services. Before coming to Cornell, she worked at the Washington and Lee University School of Law from 1999-2004: for four years Assistant Dean Peck was the Director of Career Services, having served her first year there as the Assistant Director. She began her work in the field at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she was a Career Counselor from 1997-1999. Assistant Dean Peck clerked for the Honorable Judge Richard D. Savell in Fairbanks, Alaska and litigated employment matters at Perkins Coie in Seattle, WA.

She was a founder and first president of the Finger Lakes Women's Bar Association. Assistant Dean Peck is also a member of the Washington State Bar Association and the Tompkins County (NY) Bar. She is active in NALP, the National Association for Law Placement, having served on NALP's Research Advisory Group, Ethics and Standards Advisory Group as well as its Alternative Careers and Career Pathways for Lawyers Committees. Assistant Dean Peck received her J.D. from the Duke University School of Law in 1994 and graduated from Tufts University, magna cum laude, with a B.A. in Economics and International Relations in 1991.